My first “large” puzzle

In the summer of 2008 in a break from college, one of my parents (I won’t out which one) made an offhanded comment that they didn’t think I would be able to finish this very large puzzle we had bought and had been sitting for awhile.

Well…the competitive side of me then had to complete it and thus started my love (obsession?) of very large puzzles. Since then, I’ve finished two 18000 piece puzzles, a 48000 piece puzzle and started the 40000 piece Disney puzzle, which is still in progress.

Of course, the final piece always gets finished by a guest of honor.

People always ask me how much space it takes and how the puzzle itself gets done. Fortunately, I did take some photos along the way.

For these large puzzles, most of them are the exact same cut as 1000 piece puzzles, but they just transpose the cutter and cut it 18 times. For a 18K puzzle, it generally comes in bags of 4500 pieces, each with 4 sections that are the 1000 piece cut (you can generally find the exact same shaped piece 4 times in the same bag, but it doesn’t become a problem unless the color of the piece is VERY similar). This mostly happens along the edges and you have to just pick one of the two pieces.

When starting each bag, the beginning is mostly sorting all the pieces and then laying them out into collections of pieces. Sometimes this is by unique colors, sometimes it goes by shape. For this puzzle, there were certain pieces that were easier to section out (like the leopard) and the border green, but mostly these got sorted into shapes.

Then comes the fun part, actually putting the puzzle together.

Lastly, putting the 4 sections together always takes a little bit of a fun juggle. Sometimes if you aren’t careful, disaster can strike.

Finally, you get to choose what to do with the completed puzzle. This particular puzzle, we chose to use a TON of modge podge, but I personally regret this. It sort of started warping a bit over time, and puzzle glue is just annoying to work with, after this puzzle, I started using a different finishing technique that I’ll share in future posts.

Overall, loved this puzzle, love that the 4 frames actually blend together, but also would’ve preferred to not have the green border, it was really annoying to build, and cuts the image up.